The intent of leverage is to gain the biggest advantage with the least possible effort. Specifically, for Internet Marketers, that means greatest ROI with minimal personal involvement, and we can accomplish this via outsourcing.
Preceding articles discussed gaining leverage by 1) re-using, and 2) re-purposing content. In this article, we’ll focus on increasing leverage by outsourcing routine, or non-value-add work, and any work that simply isn’t a match with our unique skills, experience and/or personality.
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman addressed some interesting findings from 25 years of Gallup organization research – initially in their book, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, and then elaborating on those findings in several subsequent books. Two of their most important findings for online marketers and home-based business owners are these: 1) Emphasize your positives, not your negatives, and 2) Hire staff for talent.
Online business has a large learning curve and requires many different skills. However, few people are gifted at all of those skills – and even those who are, may not be applying their available effort and other skills if they focus on areas that are relative weaknesses for them.
William of Occam, who developed “Occam’s Razor,” has stated: “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” As online business owners, Occam’s Razor has a big lesson for us relative to our own time usage.
Tim Ferriss, who wrote “The 4-Hour Workweek” is a terrific advocate of the use of virtual assistants to handle recurring, low prioritiy activities or those for which he does not have either the time or inclination to perform.
It may come as a surprise to realize that outsourcing is not restricted to the world of giant corporations, but recognizing the low cost of international virtual assistants, even small, home-based companies can afford to delegate a lot of activities to VAs.
Many internet marketers elect to outsource article marketing. They see the importance of writing articles, but either don’t like to write, don’t have the skills, don’t want to spend the time, so they turn over those writing tasks to ghost-writers.
Another task you might consider outsourcing to a virtual assistant (or call center) is the telephone and email follow-up required for lead generation and sales closings.
If you focus on your areas of strength, you can multiply your results, whereas, focusing on improving areas of weakness willonly marginally improve your results.
Would you rather multiply your results, or simply see incremental improvements?
If you would like to learn how to leverage your efforts, sign up for the Online Success for Beginners course.
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